Even Stephen King Was Too 'Freaked Out' to Finish This Iconic Horror Movie
Can you get to the finale of the only movie that managed to terrify the King of Horror so much he called it quits in the middle?
Some people are easy to scare; others, not so much. And then, there are people like Stephen King — the King of Horror and the man behind some of the most popular, disturbing, and terrifying horror novels in history. King loves his horrors raw and is hard to impress… And yet, this one film proved to be too much even for him.
How to Scare the King of Horror 101
Stephen King often reviews horror movies. The man loves his job, and he loves the sheer terror a good horror instills into its viewers or readers. But at only one instance did the celebrated author admit to dropping a film halfway through. King described it as “the worst nightmare you ever had, the one you woke from gasping and crying with relief because you thought you were buried alive.”
“I asked my son, who was watching with me, to turn the damn thing off. It may be the only time in my life when I quit a horror movie in the middle because I was too scared to go on. <...> I was just freaked out of my mind. <...> If you’re like me, you watch the credits and try to escape the terrified ten-year-old into whom you have been regressed,” Stephen King wrote in his non-fiction book Danse Macabre.
What Movie Left King ‘Freaked Out of His Mind?’
The most likely way you’ve heard of this movie is if you’re a true horror connoisseur; or perhaps, you just stumbled upon it randomly and never managed to recover. This 1999 masterpiece is called The Blair Witch Project; it was made as a student project on a budget of a “ripped shoelace” — and created an entire subgenre of horror.
“One thing about Blair Witch: the damn thing looks real. Another thing about Blair Witch: the damn thing feels real. <...> I thought [on my first watch] that Blair Witch was a work of troubling, accidental horror, and subsequent viewings (where I actually finished the film) haven’t changed my mind,” the King of Horror added.
If you haven’t watched The Blair Witch Project, this is your call to maybe not do it. We’re scared to even imagine what must be in that cursed movie that even Stephen King felt too terrified to keep watching — so definitely think twice before putting it on.
Source: Danse Macabre by Stephen King